Waking Rose: A Fairy Tale Retold Read Online Free Page B

seas!”
     
    “Robert Browning,” he said, without looking at her.
    “But of course.”
    The silence remained, but he was aware of it now. He glanced at her then, and saw she was looking at him. She gave him a smile, a mysterious smile, and swept away back to the party.
    Troubled, he remained at the door until the music ended.
     
    Hers
     
    Rose was not afraid of snakes, bugs, slime, mice, heights, depths, loud noises, and had even braved dark places where danger might be lurking on occasion.
    But she was deathly afraid of what she wanted to tell Fish, even though she was laughing and joking with the other girls as they cleaned up the reception hall. The relatives were going back to her mom’s house, and Kateri had invited her to come to a post-bridal party for the young adults at the Kovach farmhouse, but Rose said maybe she would come by later.
    “What’s up?” Kateri looked at her, her black eyes snapping warily. “Rose, don’t.”
    “Don’t what?” Rose feigned indifference.
    “Don’t go and break your heart over that Fish guy again. He’s not worth it,” her friend said in her no-nonsense manner.
    “I just want to talk with him,” Rose objected.
    Kateri rolled her eyes. “All right. Then come over to the farm after you talk, and you and I can go out to the barn and you can have another good cry over the whole thing, okay?”
    “Okay,” Rose said, trying to strangle the butterflies in her stomach.
     
    H IS
     
    The guests had gone in spurts and trickles. Steven and his mother said goodbye early on, since they were driving back to the city that night. Feeling a sense of duty, Fish remained behind to assist the family in cleaning up the hall.
    He helped take down the Christmas lights from the ceiling and roll up and throw away huge bundles of floral paper tablecloths.  He swept the stage of cupcake crumbs, napkin bits, and broken spoons, and found a child’s shoe behind a curtain. He carried boxes out to the cargo doors of station wagons and suburbans, and waited around until people ran out of jobs for him to do. Rose, still in her bridesmaid’s dress, was also working hard, until at last the old hall was successfully restored to its usual virile drabness.
    “Can you give me a ride home?” Rose had queried while putting away the coffee maker, and he had said yes. Now with all the various helpers scattered to their different rides home, Fish found Rose standing before him, purse and bouquet in hand.
    “All set?” he asked her, taking out his car keys.
    “Yes—and no,” Rose said, looking longingly over the darkened hillside. “Would you feel up for a walk?”
    He studied her, and wondered if it would be wise to say yes.
    “Okay,” he sighed, and put away his car keys. “Where do you want to walk?”
    “Let’s go towards the golf course over on the other side of the hall,” she suggested. “It’s fun to walk on the paths there at night.”
    Out on the golf course, the moon was rising. Fish listened to the sound of occasional traffic on the country roads, and reflected on how quiet it was out here. Rose kept pace with him, sometimes walking a bit more quickly than he did.
    “I wonder how it feels to be a princess who’s just gotten married,” Rose said at last.
    “I’m not sure,” he said, unhelpfully, smiling. “I’ve never been a princess.” 
    “Happiness is such a difficult thing to describe,” said Rose, ignoring his last remark. “Maybe that’s why fairy tales just end with the old cliché of living happily ever after. It’s so much easier to visualize tragedy than happiness.”
    “True. Or it could be that happiness is just more rare.”
    Rose pondered and wound a ringlet of hair around her finger as she walked. “There’s one kind of happiness that comes from going to a wedding, and, I suspect, a whole other kind that comes from being married.”
    “The second kind is probably more real,” he said.
    “What do you mean?”
    “‘Love is an ideal thing.